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The Report of the Technical Committee on Business Taxation is the first comprehensive study of business taxation in Canada in many years and is arguably of a scope that compares favourably with the business tax volume of the Royal Commission on Taxation. In May 1998, at the meetings of the Canadian Public Economics Study Group, the report was discussed by a panel consisting of Michael P. Devereux, Roger Gordon, and John Helliwell. This article is an edited version of that discussion. The panelists considered a wide range of theoretical and practical issues concerning business taxation, matching the scope of the report itself, and their comments reflect both criticism of and praise for the report’s analyses and recommendations. Following the panelists’ presentations, there is a short question-and-answer section and then a concluding comment by Jack Mintz, chair of the committee.

We consider the impact of taxation when investors face a discrete choice between two or more mutually exclusive projects; in particular we consider the location choice of multinationals. Such choices depend on an effective average tax rate. We propose a precise measure of this rate, which is shown to be equal to a weighted average of an effective marginal tax rate and an adjusted statutory tax rate, where the weights depend on the profitability of the investment. Estimates of the distribution of this measure are presented and compared for domestic and international investment in the USA, France, Germany and the UK. We analyse the impact of harmonising corporate tax rates in Europe on incentives to locate in France, Germany and the UK.